


in a pickle

by notquitepunkrock



Series: the kids you used to love, but then we grew old [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Bad Flirting, Biology, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Hagrid is smarter than you'd think, Kind of a crack fic tbh, Pickle Dissections, Silly, Teenagers, hagrid teaches bio lol, really bad interpretation of how JK writes Hagrid's accent, there's a pickle funeral, theyre like 14 alright, this is part of my au where all the potter characters are hs teachers for some reason, this is so so silly please just read it it's a good laugh, yes its a real thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 11:59:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14236824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitepunkrock/pseuds/notquitepunkrock
Summary: The first dissection of the year is here for Hagrid's biology students. They're in for a surprise.





	in a pickle

**Author's Note:**

> this is so ridiculous but i took bio in the eighth grade and my beta, Molly, asked for Hagrid's bio class, and the only memories of middle school science I have is of sex ed and the pickle dissection we did in my sixth grade Science Research class so here we are.
> 
> Also, yes this pickle autopsy is a real thing, here's a link to the worksheet i used as reference that is the exact one my sixth grade science teacher used if you don't believe me: http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/ATG/data/released/0072-KatharineNoonan/
> 
> also i know i invented jasmine and ella but i'm emotionally invested in them now please release me from this hell

A distinct smell permeated the Science hallway, one that had the underclassmen turning green and the upperclassmen smirking at their tiny heads. The first dissection of the year always filled the halls with a sort of nervous anticipation. 

George Weasley chuckled as a small Freshman girl ducked past him and into the biology room. “They have no idea, do they, Freddie?” he asked. Another girl slipped into the room as well, looking rather frightened. George’s brother chuckled, shook his head.

“They’ve no idea, Georgie,” he grinned.

In the classroom next door, Hogwarts’ resident biology teacher, Rubeus Hagrid, busied himself at the front of the room. His class of freshmen and sophomores filed slowly into the room, their noses scrunched up at the scent of chemicals filling the room. It was stronger here than it was in the hallway. Hagrid seemed entirely unbothered by the smell, smiling and waving at his students despite their covered noses and scrunched up faces.

The bell rang and the students settled into their seats. Hagrid turned to them with a huge, jovial smile from underneath his bushy beard.

“Alrigh’ all, it’s dissection day!” he announced, clapping his large hands together excitedly. He was met with groans from the majority of the class, save for a few grinning freshman boys in the back row who poked at each other in the ribs. “None o’ that now! I think yeh’ll be surprised by how much you like it.”

One of the girls raised a tentative hand, biting her lip until she was called on. “Hagrid, sir,” she said once she was called upon, furrowing her eyebrows. “What are we dissecting today?”

Hagrid simply grinned, popping the lid off of one of the large plastic buckets at the front of the room. The vaguely vinegary smell grew even stronger, and the girl gagged a little as it swept through the classroom. “I’m glad yeh asked, Ella,” he said, reaching into the tub with one hand. “We’re doing pickles today!” 

He started passing out the papers in his hands, worksheets with the words “Pickle Autopsy Lab” printed across the top in bold letters. “I know yeh all remember the video we watched last week on dissecting pickles and how it’s good practice for the real thing.” Hagrid sent the boys at the back a significant look - he was well aware they had spent the entire period on their phones. “We’ve done plenty o’ preparing for today, an’ I’ll be walking around the help anyone who needs it.”

A teenager near the middle of the room raised an eyebrow, peering at the box of tools in front of them. “So, like, are these real dissection things or what?” they asked.

“Good question, Skylar,” Hagrid said, pointing at them. “They’re real, so yeh gotta be careful where yeh put that scalpel. Don’ want anyone losin’ a finger. Not again.” He said the last part so seriously that the class shifted nervously, unsure if he was joking or not.

“Alrigh’! Send on person from yer table to get the specimen! Remember, we have tomorrow to finish up, so be thorough!”

The students shuffled to the front of the room to receive a pickle from Hagrid’s bucket, some students looking more skeptical than others. Ella returned to her table with her dissection tray cradled carefully in her hands. Her lab partner, Jasmine, wrinkled her nose at the sight of it. “I hate pickles,” she declared, poking the tray away from her when Ella set it down.

“Then this’ll be very therapeutic fer ya!” Hagrid bellowed from behind them, making the tall girl jump with a squeak of embarrassment. 

He lumbered away with a chuckle, heading for the back corner where the boys seemed to have decided to use their pins as swords. Ella tied her long hair up with a quick efficiency and shot Jasmine a smirk. “Don’t worry, princess,” she said, nudging her in the arm with her elbow. “I gotcha covered for this one. Read me the instructions, if you’d please.” 

While the two girls got started with their lab, carefully drawing and labeling both sides of their pickle pre-incision, chaos erupted on the far side of the room. 

“Skylar! You killed Johnny!” screeched Reuben, jumping up from his seat. Skylar stared down at their now-decapitated pickle, turning to look up at him with wide, apologetic eyes.

“I mean,  _ technically _ , this is an autopsy, right?” they said slowly. “So,  _ technically _ , Johnny was already dead.” Reuben let out a horrified gasp, leaning forward and shoving his finger in front of his best friend’s face.

“How dare you! Take that back!” he said. His dark eyes were slightly crazed, and Skylar was suddenly very glad that they were the one holding the scalpel.

The stammered out an apology and glanced back at the directions, narrowing their eyes. “Okay, but in my defence, Hagrid is kind of a shitty speller and these are super vague directions. I saw the word slice and I went for it,” they shrugged. 

Reuben snatched the paper out of their hands. “Not in half, you numbnuts!” he said, plopping into his chair in defeat. He let out a frustrated sigh and shoved the directions back towards Skylar after skimming them. “Just draw your mistakes and don’t complain to me if we get an F,” he said. 

Skylar grinned and began drawing the two pieces of pickle in the provided space on the side of the worksheet, taking care to include the bump on the “head” and the seeds spilling onto the tray from the specimen.

In the back of the room, Toby and Levi were sheepishly putting the pins back into their appropriate spot. Hagrid was still grinning cheerily at them while reminding them that there was to be “no horseplay during labs,” which Toby thought was arguably worse than being yelled at.

As their teacher turned back towards the front of the room, Levi bent over their pickle while wielding the scalpel. “Okay, so, you finish drawing all the weird bumpy things and that big scar across its face, and I’ll do the y-shaped incision or whatever,” he said, sticking out his tongue as he carefully made the first cut. 

“Whoa, did you actually pay attention during that video? I thought you were texting Vanessa,” Toby asked, incredulous. Levi grinned and shot him a wink. 

“I’m a great multitasker,” he said, in a way that would have been smooth if it wasn’t coming from a fourteen year old boy with a pair of safety goggles pushed carelessly to the top of his head as he leaned over a pickle. Toby rolled his eyes and shoved him teasingly away before he did what was asked of him.

As Levi made the second incision, Kendall leaned across Toby to ask a question, startling the boy. His hand slipped in just the right way to send a spurt of pickle juice right into his eye. Levi gasped, toppling out of his seat and clutching at his face. 

“Holy shit! That burns!” he yelled. The distinct sound of Jasmine giggling hit his ears and he felt his face flush. Well, there went his chance of asking her to homecoming. Hagrid hurried back to Levi’s side, helping him get to his feet.

“Alrigh’, Alrigh’, out o’ the way,” Hagrid called, guiding Levi to the eye rinse. “Get ready, yer about to get a bit damp.” He turned the sink on and guided Levi’s face to it. The boy grimaced squeezing his eyes shut as the water touched his face, instinctively squirming away. Unfortunately, his teacher’s hands were clamped firmly on his shoulders, and he gently guided him forwards.

Reluctantly, Levi opened his eyes into the stream, letting the blasts of cold water run over his eyes and cover his shirt. He stood up for a moment, blinking blearily and gasping as it burned still more before shoving his eyes back into the water. It sucked, but it was better than the vinegar burning out his corneas. Water was getting everywhere - Levi’s shirt was now drenched, his jeans and shoes also decently soaked. The cuffs of Hagrid’s massive sweater were damp as well, and a few water droplets clung to his beard. Still he continued to smile jovially over the class that was slowly descending into chaos.

Jasmine was still watching Levi’s eye bath, much to Ella’s dismay. She brushed her hair back and cleared her throat pointedly, rolling her eyes at Levi’s plight once her lab partner finally turned her way. “Did he seriously manage to get pickle juice in his eye because his goggles were on top of his head? Function over fashion, dude,” Jasmine said, nodding towards the boy in question. She tapped on her own goggles as if to make a point.

Ella grinned, eyes scanning Jasmine’s face from behind her own goggles. “I don’t know, I think you’re still pretty cute,” she said. Jasmine’s cheeks colored and she ducked behind her curls.

“Oh, um, th-thanks, Ella,” she stuttered. Ella grinned, leaning over to push the other girl’s hair out of her face.

“Any time, princess,” she said with a quick smirk, before turning back to the pickle in front of them. Jasmine didn’t respond, but she could see her face turning even pinker from the corner of her eye. “Right, so I  _ think _ I’m supposed to pin this flappy bit down and take out the seeds? Jaz, you draw this part, you’re so much better at art than I am- oh, hi Mr. Weasley. Mr Weasley.”

Fred and George grinned down at them. “Don’t mind us, girls,” Fred said.

“We just came to witness the chaos,” George added.

“Best lab of the year, really,” the former finished.

They turned away, and Ella shrugged, returning to carefully scooping seeds out of the pickle’s supposed stomach and into a small petri dish beside her hand. The next time she looked up, the two teachers seemed to have initiated a swordfight with the actual pickles. The other half of the class was still trying to finish the lab, with minimal success it seemed. 

Levi, for example, had returned to his seat, but he was covered in water and his eyes were still a bit pink. Judging by the odd look on Toby’s face, his attempts to take over in the cutting part of the lab were not going well. Reuben was still yelling in exasperation at Skylar as they continued dissecting Johnny the Pickle, though from the front of the room it appeared they’d only managed to further mangle its body.

She shrugged and returned to her work.

With five minutes left at the end of the period, Ella and Jasmine completed their dissection, sitting back in their chairs with triumphant grins. “Take that, Levi,” Ella muttered, glaring slightly at the poor boy whose hair was still sending rivulets of water streaming towards the desk.

“We never named our patient,” Jasmine said, poking the plate with a manicured finger again. Ella tilted her head and grinned, leaning just a bit closer.

“We should give it the prettiest name in the world,” she said, her smirk falling back into place. 

Jasmine’s cheeks started to pinken again. “And what would that be?” she asked.

Ella casually twirled a piece of hair around her finger. “Jasmine,” she said easily, grinning as Jasmine stammered through a reply and her face turned red enough to rival a tomato. 

Finally, she seemed to catch the words she was looking for, stuttering them out in a rush of breath that was so fast Ella almost couldn’t understand them. “I think Ella’s prettier,” she managed, looking a bit stunned with herself. Ella’s own cheeks grew warm at the compliment.

“Not as pretty as you,” she teased. The bell rang just then, and she stood up, throwing her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow,  _ princess _ ,” she called over her  shoulder, leaving the now disaster of a classroom behind and a flustered Jasmine in her wake.

* * *

The next day, Hagrid ushered his class out of the science wing and to a large patch of grass near the greenhouses. “We are here in the pickle graveyard,” he said solemnly, looking seriously over his students. Each one was clutching either their mutilated pickle in its dissection tray or a small stack of paper towels and staring at their teacher like he’d grown a second great, hairy head.

“It’s time fer a funeral,” he continued, as though his students weren’t staring at him like he was crazy. “Unfort’nately I can only give yeh about three minutes to prepare yer eulogies, but I know they’ll be beautiful.”

The three minutes passed in a flurry of motion as students hastily wrote ridiculously flowery eulogies and scurried around collecting flowers to drop into the grave. When time was up, they all gathered at a large square hole at the end of a line of smooth stones, where Hagrid was waiting with a shovel in his hands. 

Reuben and Skylar went first, Reuben carefully cradling Johnny the pickle. He’d wrapped it tightly in the paper towels and gently lowered it into the grave, doing a quick sign of the cross over the dirt as he stood up. 

“You were a good man, Johnny,” he said. “Despite being murdered-” 

“He was already dead!” 

“In cold blood on the operating table, we’re here to pay our respects to the brave, strong man-”

“Pickle.”

“ Would you shut up? - that you were. There are some here who never believed in you, Johnny, but I did. I do. I believe in you. May you rest in piece.” Reuben finished solemnly, glaring pointedly at his best friend in the following silence. There was a long moment before Skylar jumped, looking around at the expectant faces of their classmates.

“Oh, right. Yeah, what he said,” they said quickly, doing a sign of the cross backwards in the air over the dirt. They then bent down and dropped a few small thistles into the grave with the pickle, and ushered Reuben away as he pretended to sob into his hands. It was quiet for a moment until Hagrid gave a great sniff, wiping at his twinkling eyes with the hand not holding the shovel. “Tha’ was beautiful, kids,” he said encouragingly.

The rest of the period passed quickly, with each set of lab partners giving a solemn speech over the grave. Levi and Toby took turns reading off the speech from The Fault in Our Stars, while another group sang the school song in a slow dirge. Ella and Jasmine sprinkled flower petals from the apple trees in the gardens over the grave and gave a speech about how beautiful Jasmine-Ella Neistat had been. By the time the bell rang, there were tear tracks disappearing into Hagrid’s beard.

* * *

Two weeks later, Hagrid related the successful and, more importantly, calm cow eye dissection his biology classes had carried out that day over lunch in the teacher’s lounge. Coach Diggory hummed interestedly from his perch against the counter, raising his mug to his lips thoughtfully.

“I’ve always wondered, Hagrid,” he said. “How do you get a bunch of fourteen and fifteen year olds to calm down enough to dissect a cow’s eye successfully. I don’t think you’ve ever had an accident - at least, not in the years I’ve worked here.”

Hagrid grinned, sharing a conspiratorial glance with the Weasley twins. “Pickle funerals,” he said cryptically. “Works ev’ry time.”

**Author's Note:**

> ummmm comments and kudos give me life  
> come yell at me on tumblr at moonys-crappy-doodles x  
> check out the rest of this series, its all ridiculous and most of it revolves around regulus black


End file.
